FL02 PDF (212pp) - Page 120



Heritage Is Important
took it! It was a pretty unspectacular
fight, and I soon had a ten and a half
pound carp in my net! I was overjoyed to have caught one, but little did
I know it was to be three months
before I was to land another one!
I can’t remember all the details
from that summer; perhaps the
weather wasn’t that good for surface
fishing, but over the next year I gradually progressed to carp rods and
ledgering with luncheon meat, and
also cat or dog food, before I discovered boilies (side-hooked at first!),
and finally the hair rig. They were fantastic days, and taught me many
things in my fledgling carp fishing
career. My dad got into the carp fishing as well, and we met many new
friends, some of whom I’m still in contact with today. People like Mark
(Top left) Fishing Horseshoe, late
eighties.
(Top right) Vauxhall Lake 1987.
(Right) Horseshoe Lake, late eighties.
(Below) Marlborough Pool, late
eighties.
Anderson, Dave Mills and Stuart
Ewins, who used to come down from
the Luton/Dunstable area, Mick
Piotrowski from Thame, and Lee Harraway who was another lad from my
village, but a year younger. Lee’s still
carp fishing today, Mark was, but is
now heavily into barbel fishing, and
I’ve lost touch with Dave, Stuart and
Mick. Mick would take me up to
Waveney Valley one time, although it
was August bank holiday and was
absolutely packed. One guy that my
dad and I became friends with was a
chap who was to have the most influence of anyone on my early carp fishing days, other than my dad. His
name was Simon Taylor, and he was
really helpful. Before I had a car, he
used to come and pick me up when
we were fishing over at Horseshoe
120 FREE LINE
Lake in Lechlade, which we used to
fish a bit when we wanted a different
water from Marlborough. Around that
time another good friendship was
made with another local lad the same
age as Lee, Stuart Roper. These days
Stuart still fishes, although not exclusively for carp, and he’s a bailiff on the
Linear site. Those Horseshoe Lake
carp were still babies at the time,
being in the 4-6lb range mainly. Look
how they’ve grown!
Because of my dad’s job at ARC, we
were also able to fish a couple of pits
actually on the gravel workings,
which were full of even smaller carp
(3-5lb range). They looked almost
identical to the Lechlade carp, and
I’m sure that was because Horseshoe
was owned by ARC at the time, and
that this was not a coincidence. When

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